Somewhat shockingly, it is now exactly 14 years since Monevator was lucky enough to post a three-part mini-series written by a man named Jacob – the up-and-coming voice behind an intriguing blog called Early Retirement Extreme.

Then describing himself as semi-retired in his early 30s, Jacob was living an unusual lifestyle. One partly funded with investment income and partly from part-time work.

In those faraway times when almost nobody had heard of the term FIRE, Jacob’s views were radical and exciting.

My 2010 introduction read: “While I see echoes of his lifestyle in my own, Jacob goes much further than I do – indeed his approach won’t suit many! But his explanation of what he does and why will certainly make you think.”

The first part of my introduction has stood the test of time. But with tens of thousands of people having since pursued the so-called LeanFIRE path to financial freedom, the second part not so much! (There’s even a povertyFIRE subreddit that occasionally name checks him, though I doubt Jacob would approve of the term.)

Anyway since 99% percent of people reading Monevator today were not around in those prehistoric days, I’ve republished the first article below.

You’ll find it just as Jacob wrote it all those years ago, followed by links to his two follow-up posts. Do check out the original comment thread too for a couple of familiar faces…

Finally Jacob Lund Fisker – we eventually got a full name – went on to write a book called Early Retirement Extreme, if you want to learn even more.

Okay, cue the time travel music, and over to Jacob…

I am 34-years old. I have been financially independent since I was 30. That is to say, my passive income from broker and savings accounts has exceeded my expenses each year (except in 2008 where I relied on carryovers from previous years).

According to Monte Carlo simulations like FIREcalc, it will continue to do so for the next 60 years.

I no longer work for a living. I managed this through a combination of saving most of my income while I was working and figuring out how to spend very little money. You can read my story, but if you want to become financially independent and have your money working for you, it is better not to repeat some of the mistakes I made.

I did not make bank in the real estate bubble or start a successful company. Nor did I achieve superior investment returns.

In fact, I used to be an astrophysicist, a career that pays about as well as long-haul trucking, but which allows some paid travel for one to see the world (I guess the same holds for trucking), whereby the world I mean places like CERN, Princeton, Los Alamos, and other labs, universities and the occasional resort.

I worked in that field for nine years (four of them in grad school). It would be fair to say that I have retired from that career.

What I do in my early retirement

I spend time writing a book, keeping my blog going, and serving on the board of directors for a non-profit start-up.

When I am not being ‘productive’:

• I crew on a 34-foot racing yacht once a week, working my way up to ocean racing. I recently crewed on my first short ocean race going under the Golden Gate bridge and onto the Pacific Ocean.

• I practice shinkendo, which is applied Japanese swordsmanship, four hours a week.

• I also repair bikes occasionally, helping out in keeping the fleet working for a women’s shelter and ‘marrying’ broken bikes into functional ones.

I’ve always liked writing. I used to blog privately on MySpace about anything and everything until I discovered the existence of public blogs – mainly personal finance blogs.

I thought I had enough material about personal finance to write daily, so I started my blog Early Retirement Extreme in December 2007 and I have been going at it ever since.

Early retirement: what’s in it for you?

I want people to take a step back and think about why they live as they do.

Today we are twice as productive as in the 1950s, meaning we could live a 1950s lifestyle with better technology and a four-hour work day as a single income family.

Yet people now seem to need two incomes just to get by, and apparently millions of dollars to retire.

So many life skills have been lost on the way to the mall to buy cheap junk and fake happiness. People own huge houses that they work so hard to pay off that they only have time to sleep in them or crash and watch TV. They drive expensive cars stop-and-go at 20mph to go to work, mainly to pay for the few hours they spend outside of work.

It could be very different. I want to show how it is possible to live happily without spending a lot and without using a lot of resources.

If the Earth was a pie, it is not growing bigger, and yet there are 120 million more people being added every year. We’ll pass seven billion within a few years. You can see that in greater competition – including wars – for resources, which is reflected in things like the price spikes for oil, metals, gold, and corn.

I think the point of diminishing returns was reached some time ago in terms of competition as a viable strategy to a better life. It is much more efficient to learn to live well on less than to waste time and energy competing for more.

Further reading on the Early Retirement Extreme method

The Investor here again, in 2024 with a few more pointers…

You should definitely read Jacob’s second article for Monevator, where he shared some ways of living frugally that enabled his early retirement.

The third and final part is a call to live differently if you want a different outcome to the norm.

Jacob’s Early Retirement Extreme blog is no longer updated (archive posts are regularly re-dated) but there’s still a functioning US-focused forum.

Were you inspired by Jacob back in the day? (I know @TA was.)

Please tell us how extreme you got – and whether it worked for you – in the comments below.

What caught my eye this week.

I read an interesting article this week about a former US politician who now lives in France.

The gist is that having failed to transform US society to his more liberal tastes – we’d say socialist in the UK – the former Democrat Jim McDermott chose to move to France instead:

Today McDermott calls himself an immigrant. He lives alone. He barely speaks French. But he’s a big fan of the French motto ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité,’ and says that communal spirit is evident both in his everyday interactions with his neighbors and how the French government treats its people.

When he arrived in France, he needed to fill a few prescriptions but didn’t have a French primary care doctor. The pharmacist looked at his empty pill bottles and refilled them, no questions asked. When McDermott finally got a French physician, he received a brand-new CPAP machine at no cost. A month later, someone came to make sure it was working properly.

“Coming to France is like a drink of cold water,” he says. “Once you’ve had this experience, it’s easy to see all the ways in the U.S. you’re getting screwed — well, not screwed per se, but definitely overcharged.”

It’s a thought-provoking admission, albeit one that recalls a challenge often issued by the far right: “If you don’t like how things are, why don’t you F-off leave then?”

(Well, because many people cannot, realistically, for starters. But let’s put that to one side for now.)

Go your own way

I remember being struck 30-odd years ago by the politics of Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash.

This science-fiction classic is today remembered mostly for what it foresaw – and got wrong, of course – about technology, especially the coming Internet-everywhere era.

But Stephenson’s portrayal of a world where people signed-up to join different ‘affinities’ that most matched their personal politics – with financial and legal consequences, and regardless of geography – was striking, too.

No nationalism. Extreme individualism.

Going through my student-y anarchist phase at the time (in an academic sense) I’m not sure I even recognised this as the dystopian vision I’d now clearly see it as.

I’ve heard that some ultra-libertarian sorts in the US still don’t get the joke, and consider Snow Crash a bit of a Bible.

It’s not hard to see how signing up to a regime of very low taxes, a fine-based legal system, and a policy of extreme neutrality, say, might appeal to those whose appetites were whetted by William Rees-Mogg’s also prophetic The Sovereign Individual.

And to be fair, after the Brexit schism in the UK and looking at polarised party politics in the US, the appeal of only having to deal with, support, and be held accountable by those who share your values is pretty relatable, whichever side you’re on.

Little lies

Let’s say you believe, like I approximately do, that we should have a flat and ultra-simplified tax rate of perhaps 30%, across all income and gains, 0% corporation tax, that the state does too much for the wealthy (and older) middle class but not enough to lift up the young and properly poor, and that the very rich should pay a wealth tax. (Maybe 1% annually on assets over £5m – and they should be publicly lauded and celebrated for it, too).

I’ll never be able to vote for such fiscal policy. Existing parties might even see some of those desires as contradictory. (I don’t think they are, but that’s my point).

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could opt into a group who shared my views?

Well yes, until you think about the realities.

What ‘club’ with the means to actually support them would welcome in the poor and hopeless?

What to do with the unrepresented and destitute outside your front door?

Who pays for the army and the border police?

And so on.

Snow Crash touches on these issues, as well as offering (from ancient memory) satirical solutions. Private security, obviously, and swarms of nano-bots that keep the individual safe from rival factions.

Moving to another country, like the former US politician did, seems more practical in the real world .

Through this lens, our intractable immigration issues might be seen in a more generous light as a vote for Western-style capitalism with a safety net, as much as the global poor wanting to share our material prosperity.

I’ve even half-joked to friends that perhaps countries could opt-into being governed by wealthier neighbours. That the US, say, could operate overseas on a sort of franchise system.

(I suppose some would argue this is what the EU does on its Eastern flank. But that’s a can of worms for another day!)

Landslide

I’m curious: as it’s an election year, what would your perfect national political party offer in terms of tax, spending, and personal finance and investing?

Share your thoughts in the comments below. (But let’s not get into third-rail, off-topic political stuff like the death penalty or defunding the police or whatnot. I’ve tried to stick to the financial stuff, please reciprocate…)

Have a great weekend.

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